American Follies

by Norman Lock

  “Living on Maiden Lane, I suppose you and Franklin could not help being swept up in the fuss and folderol of the People’s Day.”

  “Yes.” I told him how we had stood on a roof in Park Lane and smelled a roasting ox.

  “Sporting types are actors without talent. Denied a legitimate stage, they shout, shove, bellow, and brawl in a barroom or on a rooftop and think they are great fellows, when they are merely fools. What a shame that John Wilkes Booth could not have been content on a less momentous stage than history’s! Bored with the smell of greasepaint, he wanted the stench of blood in his nose. Well, history is a raree-show where men are remembered for the enormity of their crimes. I’m exaggerating, of course, but truth in our time is best told as Mark Twain tells it.”

  He made several other remarks that struck me with their bitterness. He also recalled how the river on the day of the bridge’s grand opening had been bright blue. “I can’t remember its having been so before.”

  We got off the car and stood awkwardly on the pavement. I sensed that he was reluctant to part company. I wished only to go home and sleep; however, I didn’t want Melville to know that I was living with two suffragists. I’ve no idea why I should have cared.

  “Can I escort you home?” I guessed he thought I was living still on Maiden Lane, which was not far from where we stood and dithered. “There’re many rats and roughnecks about.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Melville, but I’m stopping at a friend’s.”

  “Then I wish you a good night, Mrs. Finch.” He tipped his hat and took a few steps down Chatham before turning round. “If you do see Shelby, please tell him that I’m doing what I can for him. And don’t forget the cigars.” He tipped his hat again, and I soon lost sight of him in the crowd.

  Angel of the Waters

  NEXT MORNING, I TOOK the Hudson River Railroad train to Sing Sing. In my purse were Melville’s gift of cigars, a book of Longfellow’s poems, a cabinet card showing Martin at Coney Island, and a molasses cake Elizabeth had baked “to cheer up the gentleman,” as if I were visiting a shut-in and not a prisoner convicted of manslaughter. Despite the dreary brick pile of the penitentiary, the town is admired for the beauty of the Upper Hudson, with its views of the high bluffs, Hook Mountain, and Croton Bay. Beyond the bay, the river widens at Haverstraw to more than three miles from shore to shore. Ships, barges, and packet boats travel thirty miles upriver from New York City, stopping at the port towns along the way, and thence north to Albany, Lake Erie, and the Ohio Valley wheat fields.

  When I disembarked at Sing Sing, a light rain had begun to fall. By the time I arrived at the prison and took an uncomfortable seat in a dismal waiting room, I regretted the three-hour trip from the city. Elizabeth and Susan had urged me to rest after the previous day’s exertions. Concerning my panicked wanderings inside Bellevue Hospital and having met Henry James, I said not a word. Seeing that I could not be dissuaded, the two women went with me to the depot and waved their handkerchiefs as the train shuddered into motion. I settled into a plush seat and fell asleep, heedless of the monumental Palisades and the western bluffs. I didn’t wake until the train stopped at Tarrytown to take on passengers—a drummer in hardware wearing a checkered coat and a derby hat and a woman who struggled with a Gladstone bag and would not surrender it to an amused porter who followed behind her with a creaking baggage truck.

  As I waited for Shelby to be brought down from the cells, a guard handed me a dingy towel to dry my face and hair. When I thanked him, he replied gruffly, like a man embarrassed by his own kindness.

  An interval of dreadful expectancy ensued, which in retrospect always brings to mind the first verse of the eighth chapter in the Book of Revelation: “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” At last, the guard, who did not utter a word as he led me along a dim bricked passage smelling of carbolic, motioned me toward a small room, like an usher showing a lady into a box at the opera. Shelby was sitting on the other side of a wire screen. “You have ten minutes,” said the guard.

  “Only ten? I came such a long way,” I said meekly, because bears—and the guard was a bear of a man—prefer honey to vinegar. The bear must have had a toothache, since he repeated, “Ten minutes.”

  “I have a cake.” He took it “to be examined.” I’ll never know if Shelby tasted it. “And two cigars from Mr. Ross’s friend.” I turned to Shelby. “Mr. Melville sent them.”

  “I’ll see that the prisoner gets one.”

  I held the photograph up for the guard’s inspection. “A picture of my late brother-in-law.” I showed it to Shelby. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “Thank you kindly,” he said. His face was ashen, like his prison clothes, but maybe the murky light made it appear so. The rain falling hard on the roof sounded like nails spilling from a barrel.

  “The prisoner can keep the picture,” said the guard, taking it from my hand with a studied brutishness, which I sensed was only partly intended. He may be spied on through a chink in the wall by the Grand Inquisitor of Sing Sing, I told myself. “I’ll leave it in his cell.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said timorously, a counterfeit of a helpless woman, which would have infuriated my suffragists. I pictured Susan beating the blockhead with her umbrella.

  The guard took a seat behind Shelby and, taking out his pocket watch, noted the time.

  “You look well,” said Shelby, smiling in that endearing way he had.

  He did not look well, so I didn’t return the compliment. “Are you all right?”

  “I am. It’s good of you to come. How is Franklin?”

  “He has gone to San Francisco to see about a job,” I said, and immediately wished I had not. Martin and Shelby had been planning to move to San Francisco; they’d had jobs waiting for them there. “I’m sorry, Shelby.”

  “Water over the dam,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “Or under the bridge, if you prefer. I’m looking ahead now.”

  “It was a mistake to have brought Martin’s picture,” I blurted.

  “Not in the least! He was a good friend—a better one than I realized at the time. I can’t forget him, nor do I want to. I am glad you brought it. And please tell Herman that I continue to be grateful. He, too, has turned out to be a friend. I would never have believed it possible!” He laughed good-naturedly. “He can be a cussed so-and-so!”

  I told him about my encounter with Melville and mentioned that he was doing what he could to help Shelby. As we talked, I would glance at his face to satisfy my curiosity concerning his welfare. His eyes appeared lusterless and sunken, the sockets deep and black. He had lost flesh; his chin and cheekbones were prominent. He had the pallid complexion of someone who has not been outside for a long time. Overall, he seemed listless, although I could see that my visit pleased him. I was glad I had come and gladder still that I did not feel the excitement I’d once known in his presence. You are cured of that, I told myself, and hastened to add that there had been nothing between us except an innocent flirtation. My composure strengthened my belief in my virtuousness. I could afford to be solicitous, even to show him the affection that a sister can a brother whom she has missed.

  “What will you do when you leave here?” I asked, determined to be as forward-looking as he.

  “I haven’t thought much about it. I suppose I’ll take up some business or other. I have a cousin in Texas. Perhaps I’ll be a cowboy like Theodore Roosevelt.”

  We laughed, and I realized that anything important we might say to each other had been said before he went to prison. I don’t recall our parting words or having walked the wet streets to the depot. As the southbound train left Sing Sing, I drowsed. I was very tired and wondered whether the trip—the effort I’d made and the nervous anticipation I’d felt beforehand—had been worthwhile.

  I awoke to the crying of lambs in Sheep Meadow. Shelby and I carried crooks to hook about the necks of those that had fallen into a ravine. We said words to ea
ch other, which I did not understand. I knew they were without comfort. The Angel of the Waters had left her place atop Bethesda Fountain. She gave me a yellow primrose and announced that I was with child and must go to Bethlehem. Beside her stood the cherubs Peace, Temperance, Health, and Purity, which had accompanied her from Emma Stebbins’s fountain in the Central Park.

  I was sitting in a drafty waiting room. I held an infant on my lap. Far away a man who might have been King Herod told three commercial travelers wearing checkered suits and derby hats, “Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.” And there was much sniggering in Jerusalem among the Pharisees.

  Once again, I fell asleep, and when I awoke, the train was hurtling south. I passed New York City. Elizabeth and Susan waved their handkerchiefs. Little Margaret sat on an elephant’s trunk. The next minute, I was riding through tobacco fields. Black men, women, and children were laboring in the sun. Though I was sitting inside the train, I could feel the heat on my face. The conductor approached me and said that I was needed in the locomotive. I carried my baby to the front of the train. He was wrapped in cloth strips, and his face was covered—I supposed to keep the flying grit from his eyes.

  “Don’t let the fire go out!” admonished the conductor, who delivered me into the hands of Mr. Roebling, the chief engineer.

  “It will be too bad for you if you let the fire out,” said Roebling, his hands inside dainty white gloves that, in spite of the oil and coal dust, were immaculate.

  I put my baby down and, looking behind me into the coal tender, saw that it was piled high with mummified cats, stiff in ragged shrouds. I began throwing them into the firebox, one after another—there seemed no end to them. Dust rose from the windings and brought tears to my eyes. The linen cloths rustled in my hands. At last, the tender was empty.

  “Don’t forget that one,” said Roebling, pointing to a child wrapped in swaddling clothes.

  “No, sir,” I said sweetly. “That is my baby.”

  “It’s dead as a stick,” he replied. “Give it to the purifying flames.”

  “It will make no difference to the fire,” I said cannily. “The sons of Adam are small.”

  “The oven has a mind of its own,” said Roebling, his face revealing perplexity before the god of steam called Moloch. “Once kindled, it will not be denied.”

  I laid the swaddled babe in golden straw, which crackled pleasingly as it burned.

  “Now dry your eyes,” said the guard, handing me a towel.

  “Who’s watching the prisoners?” I asked him, laying a hand flirtatiously on his arm.

  “They have all been put to death.”

  My shoulder began to shake. “Are you all right, my dear?” asked Roebling.

  “I’ve lost my baby,” I replied, sobbing.

  “Wake up! You’re dreaming.”

  “I tell you, I have lost my baby!”

  Light peeped in at my shuttered eyes. I opened them and saw a woman gently shaking me by the shoulder.

  “Your head is hot,” she said. “You have a fever.” She mopped my damp brow with a handkerchief. “You must’ve caught a chill walking in the rain. Can you hear me?”

  “I lost my baby,” I repeated stupidly.

  “I get off at the next stop. You’d better come with me. My house is nearby the depot. You can rest till the fever passes. I’ll call a doctor if need be. You better get off the train with me.”

  I mumbled something and shut my eyes again. I felt her arm around me and some other’s arm, too. I was being helped from the train. A porter offered to wheel me in his baggage truck. I lay on rough planks. They smelled of tar. A blanket smelling of horses covered me.

  “Am I going to the stable?” I asked.

  “Hush!” said the woman’s voice.

  I rumbled over cobblestones, over paving, over gravel. The gravel greeted me cheerfully like an old man who had fought in the war and no longer cared a whit what people thought of him. I heard singing, but maybe not. The gravel spoke in a crackling voice. Try as I might, I could not make out the words. They were drowned in the roar of the firebox.

  A door opened. I was borne aloft like the queen of Egypt visiting the house of her grand vizier. A door closed, and the fire, whose voice was alien to my ears, fell silent.

  I heard grunting; the inflection suggested that a question had been asked.

  “She’s delirious, the poor dear.”

  I smelled smoke.

  “They’re burning mummies!” I cried.

  “There, there! Put her in Louisa’s old room,” said the woman. “And put our your cigar.”

  I was lifted in a man’s strong arms and carried lightly up the stairs.

  The Shower Bath

  LILIAN HEIGOLD, WHO HAD TAKEN ME off the train at Dobbs Ferry, sat by me until morning, when, satisfied that my fever had broken, she went to her own bed and slept. As I lay in mine, I was aware of her husband’s presence, a mute one as it turned out: Fred had lost the power of speech at Gettysburg, after a rebel’s minié ball nicked his vocal cords. There was kindness in his eyes and in his hands as he brushed the damp hair from my brow in a wordless gesture of compassion, which speaks for the heart. I thought Mrs. Heigold was fortunate in a husband who could never scold or belittle her.

  By the afternoon, I was well enough to sit up and break my fast with ginger biscuits and elderberry tea, a remedy for fever. The room used to belong to the Heigolds’ daughter, Louisa, who’d married and moved to Ohio, where her new husband, a Unitarian minister, had a church in Oberlin. The room was pretty and bright; the walls were papered in pale pink roses; the brown wainscoting and windowsills had been painted white, as though to hide an ugly truth—namely, that Egyptian brown paint was made from groundup mummies.

  Through a window, I saw the Hudson shine behind a screen of willows. A coal barge disappeared below a reach; black smoke from its funnel marked its progress south toward the city. Passersby walked along the street in haste or idleness. A young woman had paused in her outing with a collie to speak across a hairpin fence to a young man holding pruning shears. A boy in knickerbockers rolled a hoop. The dog barked at him. The man said something, and the woman laughed. A postman hurried self-importantly down the sidewalk, as if he had the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in his bag. A delivery wagon bounced on rubber tires down the bricked-over street. The driver’s head was sunk between his shoulder blades; the horse’s head hung low—the man and his beast a picture of dejection. A whistle shrilled; a crow shied, cawing, from a mansard roof; a train pulled into the station and briefly vanished in a cloud of smoke.

  “May I ask what you were doing in Sing Sing?” inquired Mrs. Heigold.

  She meant the prison, not the town. “I was visiting an acquaintance.”

  “I saw you leave. I almost came up to you because of the rain, but I thought you might not wish to share an umbrella with a stranger.” She meant that I might have been embarrassed to be seen leaving the prison.

  I managed to smile. I may have taken her hand. I understood that a show of gratitude was required of me; however, I knew nothing about the woman except that she had done me a kindness. For all I knew, she might have been one of the officious tribe who like to stick their noses into other people’s business—the more tragic or scandalous, the happier they are.

  “Ellen, please forgive me,” she said, having sensed my uneasiness. Say what you will, the compassionate gift is greater than any possessed by a clairvoyant, medium, or spirit rapper, and just as rare.

  “Why were you there?” I asked, turning the tables.

  “The warden and the board of governors allow me to visit the prisoners once each week. Sing Sing is a dreadful place! The name derives from the Algonquin phrase sinck sinck, which means ‘stone on stone.’ Their shamans must have foreseen the prison that would be raised on the site of their village two hundred years after the tribe sold it to a

  Dutchman. Naturally,
they were cheated, and the Dutchman prospered.”

  “Are you a Quaker, Mrs. Heigold?”

  “I’m not religious, although I pretend to be. Otherwise, the authorities would not let me inside. Ostensibly, I’m there to lead the men in Bible study, but my purpose is to monitor their well-being as far as I am able. I need to be discreet. Questioning them about conditions at the prison is forbidden. I’ve learned to be alert to signs of mistreatment.”

  “How long have you been doing your good work?” Thinking of dear Shelby, I saw it in that light.

  “Ever since attending the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Louisville. During the war, I was a nurse at the Union Hospital in Washington. I met Walt Whitman there. I also met Louisa May Alcott. We became friends and allies in the woman’s suffrage movement. In Concord, she was the first of her sex to register to vote. Among modern women, Louisa is by no means ‘little.’ We named our daughter after her.”

  My ears had pricked up at the words woman’s suffrage.

  “I send my appraisals to Mr. Brockway, warden of the Elmira Reformatory and one of the few prison administrators who oppose the brutalities that are commonplace at Sing Sing. The so-called shower bath is especially cruel. It’s given most often to negro inmates, who are said to be in need of it.”

  I didn’t see the harm in it and said as much.